yes im a lazy arse but while away i got a teeny scratch on the lens.... luckily as close to the edge as it was possible to get.... the cause? a grain of sand that i thought was dust and very very gently tried to wipe away! whoops! so i dont really want to be caught again like that as next time it could be the centre.

i guess the best way of protecting is using a lens like a UV filter. have you guys got any suggestions what to get or if there are any sets that include macro lenses and (if the terminology is right!) muliplier lens's? i dont want to effect the light coming in or anything else to do with the shots

Gerrard also got a scratch on the lens cos he kept the uv filter off! I guess you guys have learned the hard way. Get a decent UV filter such as this which at that price is very cheap and is multi coated.

Best and simple way to protect your lens would be a UV filter it will
not do anything to your pictures so you can leave it on all the time.
Adapter + Filter.. Added bonus will be that your camera will look even
cooler as it already did.....
I'm using a B&amp;W 010 uv filter.

There are filter kits and starter kits with uv and 2 other filters available
from tiffen and i'm sure others have them too.

There are reports of sensors in digital cameras acting more so like a mirror than film. This will potentially cause unwanted reflections off other plane surfaces (like filters!)....... especially visible where shots have lots of highlights and lots of dark areas to show up the unwanted reflections ........ a good example of this is ....... night time photography!

The most important thing is to avoide situations where you get reflestions between the lens and filter. For example I took a shot of my son with the sun low at abiut 45 degrees I got a lot of circiles of lights one or two exactly on my son's face.

At night you may get a lot of reflections from stronglight sources although I can only recall one instance where I tried to take a photo of the moon - which any way was useless as the moon was too bright at those settings. Other wise I can not recall having other problems.

RecentlyI took a lot shots with flash at an occastion and I didn't have one bad shotcaused by reflections between the lens and filter.

In myopinion, and from expirience always keep the UV on and only remove the filter when absolutly necessary. In 99% of the time your shots will be ok.